This is the third book I’ve read from this author and it’s the best one yet! It’s so wonderfully thought-provoking.

This book follows January, a ballet dancer in London who, due to extreme floods, has to leave to go to Mars. The Mars colony of Tharses has been around for generations and people who live there are physically quite different due to the lower gravity. They’re taller, but three times weaker than what’s known as ‘Earthstrong’. This leads to accidental deaths of ‘naturals’ and Earthstrong have to wear cages to limit their strength. However a senator named Aubrey Gale is pushing for all Earthstrong to undergo a process called naturalisation which will reduce bone and muscle to weaken them. However people who’ve gone through this process suffer serious consequences including nerve damage and being unable to walk. January doesn’t want to go through this as he’s never hurt anyone and wants to maintain his strength to be able to continue to dance.

This was a thoughtful exploration of refugee experience and views on refugees, what the future could look like in light of climate change, what does strength really mean and understanding the views and experiences of others. I found this book so thought-provoking and utterly fascinating. This genuinely was a book I couldn’t put down. It was so cleverly written and is very careful to position different perspectives on quite serious issues.

It surprised me to read in the author's note at the end that Pulley's usual publishers rejected this novel. Whilst it's her first futuristic book, it has a very similar feel to her others and is clearly recognisable as hers. I think it's a good thing when authors branch out and do things differently. Pulley's greatest gift as a writer is creating utterly loveable characters that you completely invest in emotionally - and if an author can do that, they can write in any genre. In my experience, if you really care about what happens to the characters in a novel, it doesn't matter if they're in the Victorian era, Soviet Russia, or even - in this case - on Mars. You will want to know what happens next.

This is what I would describe as 'political sci-fi' in a similar vein to the excellent novels of Ann Leckie (well worth reading, particularly if you enjoy this one). The story is set in the future, on another planet, and is full of new technology, but the focus is on the societal implications of that. The central character is January, a ballet dancer who is forced to leave Earth when London and most of Britain are completely flooded due to climate change. Arriving on Mars, he finds he is a second-class citizen due to being 'Earthstrong'. This means he is three times stronger than - and therefore dangerous to - citizens who have adapted to life on Mars where the gravity is much weaker. He becomes an unwilling political football in a battle between two presidential candidates - one of whom wants to force all refugees from Earth to 'naturalise', a dangerous process that leaves most disabled, and the other who encourages immigration from Earth and thinks people should have a choice.

January is forced by circumstances into a publicity-stunt marriage to 'anti-Earth' candidate, whom he finds to be a nice person despite their politics. Initially the danger is political only, but soon the stakes get higher. A massive dust storm threatens to leave the Mars dwellers without power and therefore water, potentially wiping out the colony. As the settlers try to find a solution, January is also plagued by doubts about what happened to his predecessor as consort.

It's a good concept for a novel and there are clearly real-world parallels with immigration and how we treat refugees. There's no glib, easy answers and both political sides have a reasonable sounding argument (the stakes are different to those in real-life immigration due to the imbalance in physical strength between the refugees from Earth and the naturalised Mars dwellers). Pulley further muddies things by making the person with the nationalistic, 'right-wing' type views a kind, likeable character, and the more liberal politician a less nice human being.

Aside from all the politics and action - and there are plenty of both - the core of the novel is Pulley's usual formula; a slow-burn romance between two characters where a significant power imbalance exists. It's a formula that works and she does it incredibly well, but if I was going to be really critical I might wonder how many more novels she can pull off unless she varies it a bit somewhere. There were no surprises in the trajectory of the book from start to finish for a reader who has read her other novels (which are all also excellent).

Ultimately though it's an exciting and compelling story with loveable characters and a great plot, where the reader can feel a real emotional investment in the outcome. It's also full of humour, perhaps more so than her earlier novels, particularly in the footnotes. I really enjoyed it and even if it did follow similar lines to her other books, I still expect it will be in the top ten best books I read this year.

I love this author’s writing. Natasha Pulley certainly knows how to tell a story and this is one epic story. This is a very multilayered story. At its most basic level it is a very enjoyable and clever sci-fi thriller, but if you start pulling back layers you also realise there is so much more underpinning the story. The story highlights environmental issues, it is also very political and looks at gender but none of these issues are thrust in your face in fact they are just an everyday part of the story and how life is on Mars but what the story does do is subtly get you thinking about the future and what it might look like. Whilst reading the story I just enjoyed the story and the dynamics of the characters but since finishing it I actually find my mind is thinking about some of the bigger issues.

Having previously enjoyed Natasha Pulley's books I was looking forward to this latest SF installment but was quickly disappointed upon starting the book. Firstly, there is a lot of information dumping very early on that doesn't actually provide much clarity or a true explanation / understanding of the situation, it just felt as if I was sifting through someone's notes and not an edited few chapters. In addition, two things really stood out to me (and not in a good way) which were the distinct lack of women anywhere in the story and the references to Israel / Israeli accents (and the incorrect location of Bethlehem) - given the current political climate this last point is one I would have hoped would have had far more care and attention paid to it.

Note: I DNFed this book and cannot speak for the entirety of the work.

Another beautifully written story by Natasha Pulley. I don't usually choose to read science fiction but I'd always make an exception for anything written by Pulley. I really loved this story, I wasn't anticipating that I would. I thought I would probably enjoy it but I wasn't expecting to be drawn into the story so totally.
The world of the colony on Mars is well set up and I loved the characters, especially January, who is such an engaging personality. The plot is wonderfully complex and detailed. This is an intelligently written story that includes so many topical issues. It is one of those books, that you get to the end of and just think wow!
Highly recommended to take you out of your comfort zone.

There's so much going on in this book that I have no idea how to write this review.
So, climate change means that Earth is suffering innumerable environmental catastrophes. January is a ballet dancer living in a mostly submerged London. Some countries (Italy, I think) have already been completely submerged, Europe is an old decrepit backwater, the US is on fire and also at war with Russia in Alaska. Parts of Africa, the Middle East and China are seeing a huge influx of refugees from Europe and other parts of the world as they become uninhabitable. Basically, geopolitics has changed - a lot.
When London suffers even more severe flooding, January is advised that trying to join the refugees to these places is not a great prospect, but that Mars (technically still a territory of China) is happily accepting Earth refugees. This is not entirely true. As will be no surprise to anyone who reads or watches the news, a lot of people really don't like refugees (or migrants). Although it's a little more complicated with Mars.
The Mars population have been there for generations and have physically changed - they are now taller, thinner and a lot weaker than those who grew up on Earth. This leads to a lot of fear about "Earthstrongers" and the dangers they physically pose plus a healthy dose of class snobbery.
January ends up in a debate with Gale, an anti-Earthstronger Mars politician, things go wrong and he ends up being imprisoned. Imagine his surprise when Gale proposes a political marriage to save their reputation and election bid.
As I said, there's a lot going on. There's a mystery surrounding the disappearance of both Gale's former partner and sibling, there's a lot of politics with an election campaign running, fears over either an invasion from Earth or a huge influx of refugees, class privilege, and Gale and January struggling to understand each other.
Also, intelligent, talking mega-mammoths (I liked the mammoths).
If you've read any previous work from Natasha Pulley, you'll know what to expect as far as writing style and characters go - the style is quite gentle and humorous, the characters careful of each other, self-deprecating and conflicted. I did feel that this style worked well in describing flooded London, the environment of Mars and the weirder science-y stuff but felt a little at odds with the heavier political elements.
I did end up enjoying the story - there's a lot of interesting things going on - but I can't say that I was a fan of the marriage aspect (not something that's limited to this book) and it was difficult to reconcile the political views of certain characters with their personalities and behaviours.
If you like really slow burn romance, forced proximity, lots of politics and bit of quirkiness, then I recommend giving this a try.

I totally loved this book and it is my favourite read of the year so far. This is Natasha Pulley’s first foray into Science-Fiction and for me, she absolutely nailed it.
This book is full of so many briiliant ideas that there are too many to discuss them all in a single review. Natasha Pulley looks at the theme of mass immigration and what that might mean to a society as well as the idea of gender. In the Mars colony, the idea of gender is seen as something abhorrent and pronouns are all they and their. We also get an ecological disaster, a bit of weather science and some ideas about the sentience of large mammals. I did love the mammoths and the ideas of having to think in very different ways to communicate with other species. That also fits in with the theme of language and linguistics which threads through the whole book.
I loved the character of January from the very start as he rehearses for Swan Lake while wondering how long his career has left to run. The character of Gale grew on me gradually as the story progressed but I was definitely rooting for them at the end. I really liked January’s inability to trust Gale and the way in which Gale was portrayed sympathetically at the same as holding views which meant January would have to undergo naturalisation, a process that could cause serious injury and would certainly reduce his life span. One of my very favourite elements of the story was the banter between the characters especially the staff of House Gale. Some of the one line comments made me laugh out loud and I adored the cat references even though there are no actual cats in the book (unless you count the leopard in the bucket).
The lack of gender was an interesting concept. It’s quite hard to imagine characters without any gender and I think that my brain supplied some of them with a gender according to how they seemed to act or speak. Gale was the exception to this as they really came across to me as genderless.
The Mars House swept me up and carried me along with its characters and ideas. Some bits were predictable and other parts less well executed than others but I absolutely loved the book as a whole.

I very much enjoyed this intelligent sci-fi novel which looked at an alternative future where we have colonised Mars the novel sets off with a great start with a fantastic first chapter, I’m immediately, interested in the story
I loved the set up for the Story clearly explained how Mars had been Terra formed with a population now living there permanently by introducing a livable atmosphere to Mars, the novel could be set on a planet where people were not confined to spaceships . The incoming earth people are used to the gravity on Earth, where it is much stronger . because of this, they are much stronger than those people born on Mars and have to be fitted with an exoskeleton to prevent them causing injury to the weaker people. this difference between the two populations causes friction and ultimately episodes of racism. Making one of the main characters, a ballet dancer on earth makes the fact that they have to be confined to the exoskeleton whilst on Mars quite poignant.
I liked the fact that the Mars residents had given up using the pronoun she and her and all went by the pronoun they .since this is happening more in the UK this made the novel very topical . I don’t think I’d have understood the concept five years ago, but since it’s happening more and more on earth now it all made perfect sense within the novel
The alternative world is described beautifully, and all the sci-fi ideas make perfect sense. This is really a very intelligent witty novel .
There are some lovely quirky ideas within the story such as a cat who is carried around in a bucket by an artificial intelligence I just loved that. this artificial intelligence appears in the chapter and doesn’t really get referred too much after this, which seemed a pity as I rather liked them
I loved the bit when they were able to talk to Mammoth using brainwaves
Am I a point which will probably no doubt be sorted by the time the public book is published was that It was a pity that the foot notes didn’t work on my Kindle version,. When I came to them at the end, they were as they were actually really interesting, and it would’ve been nice to read them at the same time as the story
I read an early copy of the novel on NetGalley UK. The book is published in the UK on the 19th of March 2024 by Ryan publishing group.

This review will appear on NetGalley UK, Goodreads, and my book blog, bionicSarahSbooks.wordpress.com . After publication the review will also appear on Amazon, UK.

You would be forgiven for thinking that a story set on Mars in the distant future would be a big departure for Natasha Pulley but fans of her previous novels will soon feel a sense of familiarity.

The basic premise is that Mars, initially a colony of a burning up Earth, now has its own culture/ government and even genetics - lower gravity means people grow tall and spindly. Those incoming from Earth - Earthstrongers - are bulkier and stronger and can easily accidentally kill a native human Martian.

Rehearsing the details of the plot is pointless - as with her previous books it’s complicated and the joy is not so much in the plotting as the details. Pulley is brilliant at non human characters (the octopus in her previous work, here a dog and some mammoths..)

. I did really enjoy this book but I do wish she would try writing a character who isn’t an emotional intense gay man who falls in love with someone but is blind to their fairly obvious feelings. Nothing wrong with that as a plot line but it’s starting to feel a bit too much of a pattern.

I’ve only just finished this one and my thoughts still feel rather confused…

Firstly, let’s get the context out of the way: I have really loved everything I’ve read from Natasha Pulley: from The Watchmaker on Filigree Street to The Half-Life of Valerie K – I do prefer her more fantastical historical re-imagined settings. I love her world building, the tenderness of her characters’ relationships, the lgbtqia representation… So I was really excited to see The Mars House appear on NetGalley!

And, certainly I enjoyed it… eventually.

The premise is interesting: at some point in the future, Mars has been colonised for some generations now and is being run as an independent state. It’s inhabitants have adapted genetically to eliminate gender – very native Martian is a Mx and uses them / they pronouns – and to adapt to the new conditions becoming taller, slimmer, weaker, better adapted to the lower pressure and gravity. Simultaneously, the climate crisis on Earth has made life there generally untenable. A flow of refugees from Earth to Mars looks likely to become a flood.

January Stirling is one of those refugees, confined to wear a cage to limit his physical strength – the book repeatedly tells us that Earthstrongers are three times as strong as their Natural counterparts – life on Mars is not a great experience. Once the lead at the Royal Ballet, January is now one of the Earthstrongers, exploited for their utility in manual labour jobs and under constant threat of Naturalisation, an invasive and brutal procedure to reduce his sterngth to be commensurate with Natural Martians.

An unguarded comment in an interview with Senator Gale – who wants to resist immigration and compel naturalisation – leads to January’s arrest and, as a publicity stunt in the u0coming elections, Gale’s propsal of marriage on his release. It is a little bit of a strain on credulity but, okay…

January and Gale’s mutual dance around each others feelings, navigating their own fears and suspicions of the other was by turns sweet, frustrating and tender. It also felt a little drawn out despite the rather half hearted bomb threat.

The pace of the novel really picks up when a massive months-long dust storm is generated – an attempt to undermine Gale’s election prospects as he is responsible for power on Mars. Combined with a mysterious person in an orange jumper, rumours of ghosts, a suspicious Consul and omnipresent media cameras, Gale struggles to erect a massive tower to raise solar arrays into orbit to survive the dust storm, before refugee ships carrying uranium, people and potentially an army arrive to usurp him.

For me, although I did love the characters – Gale’s love of etymology and of mammoths was compelling and charming; January was sweet – I found the structure a little jarring. There was a secondary plot surrounding the disappearance of Gale’s first consort – Alex and River – in suspicious circumstances and a huge revelation dropped onto the reader. Perhaps more time spent with Gale, Alex and River – perhaps chapters alternating between the past and present – could have both raised the pace of the first half and cemented those characters more clearly in the readers’ minds, preparing us for the revelatory moment.

Pulley does seem to have a predilection for power imbalances in relationships: Thaniel and Mori, Merrick and Raphael, Valerie and Shenkov, all have massive power inequalities, and yet they are all tender and careful. This novel does explicitly address this issue: the earthstrongers are terrifying because they are three times stronger and can cause terrible numbers of injuries and deaths, but there are more forms of power than political power. The Natural Mars inhabitants are physically weaker but tall and looming, their social class and education and privilege as well as their political power make them even more terrifying in many ways than the earthstrongers.

It was brave of Pulley to evoke so directly the issue of immigration, and to present us with a charming character whose policies of compulsory Naturalisation were abhorrent. January, after his time in prison, was on the verge of giving up and going to be Naturalised and the consequences were horrific and crippling, if not fatal – especially to someone used to having the strength and grace of a dancer. It is as an escape from that horrific decision that prompts him to marry Gale – and it is a fate that always looms over him, at the end of the fixed-term five-year marriage, in the event that Gale wins the election. Would Pulley force him to cripple himself? Or does she shoehorn in a happy ending? I have to say that the ending of the novel was very optimistic but very forced and struck me as rather contrived. It did leave a sour taste.

Finally, I did love some of the smaller quirkier details – the footnotes, the little nod to Mori and Daughter watchmakers of Filigree Street and, although I was disappointed by the lack of octopuses, I did enjoy the titanic mammoths especially as they start to philosophies and show a humanity and compassion that some of the actual humans struggled to achieve!

As I have said before in various reviews, I love Pulley's writing and I will happily read anything she writes.

In the author's note for this she mentions being a historical fiction writer but I think that's ignoring the very strong sci fi elements of her previous work, and really does show why genres can be restrictive. This is definitely sci fi though. And she write romance, doesn't she? All her books have completely swoony queer romance at their hearts. This one has a Fake Relationship and there's nothing more rom fic.


Things are bad on Earth. London's mostly underwater, the US is on fire, and there's war between Russia and America. After a particularly severe flood, January, principal dancer with the Royal Ballet, is forced to flee. He's offered the chance to escape to Mars with other refugees, and he takes it. Things on Mars are different. Despite generations of terraforming and suchlike, it's still freezing cold and there's no water. This makes people tense. Something else that makes people tense is that native Mars born humans (Naturals) are evolving - or being modified - to deal with the different gravity. They're taller than 'Earthstronger' humans but weaker. Those born on Earth are a risk, with multiple accidents every year resulting in the deaths of Naturals. The tensions created by this situation are as you might imagine.
There's an election coming up. The incumbent Consul thinks Mars should accept that it's a colony and allow as many refugees in as want to come. The opposition senator thinks Earthstrong should be forced to 'naturalise' - a life-limiting process that results in osteoparosis and can cause dementia and permanent disability.
The story of how January becomes involved with the senator is twisty, complex and full of risk, both physical and emotional. There are lots of questions here about responsibility, nationalism, and the personal v. the political. Plus some wonderfully realised worldbuilding. The mammoths are amazing and Pulley's footnotes about language (on Mars people speak Mandarin, Russian, and English in that order, and dialects are developing - there are seven generations of Naturals so far) are fascinating. I love footnotes, and linguistics.

I think I said in my review of Valery K that it would be interesting to see Pulley write something set in a place or time where there are no issues about sexuality. (The jeopardy in the romances in the previous books is always about this.) On Mars it's rude to gender people. All the Naturals are referred to as 'they' and their appearance is gender neutral. They've been genetically tweaked to avoid human sexual dimorphism, and looking at a person's clothes will give you no hints about what might be going on underneath.

It's interesting that one's own socialisation leads one to interpret various characters in gendered ways. I saw a review that suggests Pulley attempts to avoid the accusations of misogyny she's dealt with before by simply not including any women, which is not strictly true although it's not a completely unreasonable comment. However in the same way that gender neutral clothing in 'real life' tends towards masc rather than femme, I think there's an inclination to interpret gender neutrality as default maleness. This is just a book review, not an essay, so I don't have the time or energy to discuss this futher.

There is also a weird thing going on about weight, but I'm prepared to accept that this is January's issue not Pulley's (since the things characters say and think cannot be simply extrapolated to represent the author's opinion). I think we all know that ballet dancers live a very odd life, and their diets and attitudes to their bodies are not necessarily normal or healthy.

I didn't like this one, unfortunately. The worldbuilding consisted exclusively of info dumping, there were too many terms you didn't understand and there was way too much time spent explaining things that weren't relevant to the reader at all. This book could have been cut by 200 pages easily.

I also didn't really understand the message this was trying to convey, the whole system regarding gender was impossible to understand and also, honestly, didn't really make sense. Besides, would it have hurt to have a woman appear in this book?

Last but not least the romance didn't work for me at all, I'm usually very into fake marriage of all kinds but the trope of the xenophobic character falling for the person they hate should be left in 2023. I also didn't see any character development, if anything it was in a worse direction. A big miss for me, sadly.

Also, Bethlehem is in Palestine.

I was very excited to receive this ARC from Netgalley as Natasha Pulley is one of my favourite authors. This book did not disappoint,
January is a ballet dancer in a future London where the world’s environment has led to massive flooding and massive immigration to countries where the situation is slightly less desperate. Of course, these countries do not want to take in the rest of the world and are closing their boundaries. January ends up with nowhere to go apart from the colony on Mars. The theme of immigration continues throughout the book as the characters struggle with the implications a tidal wave of people from earth will have on the fragile bodies and society of Mars. Pulley does not pretend there are simple answers to these questions and shows sympathy to different feelings.
On Mars, January finds that new immigrants from Mars are significantly stronger than people who are evolved from several generations of living with such different gravity. The strength of the Earthstrong population is viewed as a huge threat and there are rules that keep them segregated and poor. The book explores the idea of strength in many different forms and how to take away the threat from power of many kinds.
January meets a powerful Senator called Aubrey Gale and, for political reasons, ends up in an arranged marriage with them, This romance has echoes of more traditional romance novels but is very much a slow burn and their characters are well developed during this time,
The book also takes the opportunity to explore ideas of gender as the naturalised Mars inhabitants are all referred to as ‘they’ and there is the complicated idea that ‘extreme gender traits’ have been removed genetically. What this might mean is not explored and is probably a minefield well worth avoiding,
Added into this is political intrigue, environmental disaster, the mystery of what happened to Aubrey’s previous partner and brother and reality TV documenting their lives.
There is so much to take in that I will need to reread this but about 50% of the way through I didn’t really want to do anything else other than find out what was going to happen next. I loved this book and highly recommend it. Please don’t be put off by it being science fiction as what is happening to everyone is so very relevant to lives now (although there is one marvellous bit with mammoths which you will either love or hate). Definitely 5 stars.

DNF @50%

Since this is an ARC, my decision to DNF this doesn't comes easily. But, I am halfway through and I am just not enjoying reading this book.

It has such a great concept and theme but, sadly, I don't think this book was for me.

In the months between reading The Half Life of Valery K and The Mars House, I made a promise with myself: if Natasha Pulley’s next book didn’t do away with the misogyny that has characterised her previous five books to varying degrees (as I mentioned in my Valery K review), then I would give up on her future books. Well, I have good news on that front, because there was no misogyny in this one!

If only because there were no women* whatsoever.

Now, this really isn’t my primary issue with the book, except that I think it ties in with a general misunderstanding of gender which undercuts anything this book might be trying to say about the topic (this is, to be perfectly honest, my most generous take on it. That it’s trying to say anything at all, notwithstanding the question of whether it’s capable of doing so). No, this is merely a single issue within a sea of them, which, lucky you!, I will be enumerating in this review. Stop reading now if you want to a. avoid spoilers, or b. simply desire the feeling of wanting to read this book. For those of you who read further, well. Godspeed.

There are very few reviews which I can’t just write from my notes, but my notes are so long and cumbersome for this one that I have actually needed to sit down and get them in order before even attempting a review. In trying to group together all of my problems here, I think most of it comes down to failures in worldbuilding. A second, smaller but not more minor, set of issues relates to the characters. A final set — and this one I can call more minor — regards Pulley’s writing itself, which I never thought I’d say, having loved it in at least four of her previous five. Oh and then, one big glaring, what the fuck bit.

So, let’s take them one by one.

— The worldbuilding.

1. Gender.

We’re starting with one of the two big issues straight up and that’s Pulley’s treatment of gender. Or, to be more exact, the way she has created a society without gender. Firstly, I have to say, reading this at the same time as Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch, a sci-fi series that thinks about gender in an interesting way, was a mistake. All it did was show up how badly it was done here.

Pulley’s concept of gender is solely based on pronoun use. It took me a little while to figure it out (mostly because I couldn’t believe the justification would be this inane), but the reason everyone on Mars uses they pronouns is twofold: one, they all speak Mandarin and, because in spoken Mandarin ‘he’ and ‘she’ sound the same, they decided instead to just make it a ‘they’ pronoun and apply it to everyone. Thus, we have a distinction between the “civilised” Martians (who are a few generations removed from having travelled from Earth to Mars) who only use ‘they’, and the “uncivilised” refugees who still insist on using ‘he’ and ‘she’. And secondly, while choosing to use ‘they’ — which I also want to note was, it sounds, just an arbitrary decision — they also eliminated “extreme gender traits” in DNA. Whatever that means!

All of this, I think, just shows a fundamental misunderstanding of our own concept of gender in the 21st century, let alone what a concept of gender a few decades down the line might look like. But what we can safely say is that, if it’s not based on pronouns now, it’s hardly going to suddenly convert to being based on pronouns in the future, is it? Not to mention the whole pronouns thing is actually being translated from Mandarin to make this happen. The characters are speaking Mandarin as the book happens, albeit a Mandarin which has had a few generations to develop from Mandarin as we know it now (enough, it seems, for Mars to exact genetic alterations on humans too, while not being that far removed into the future. And here I was thinking these things moved slowly…). I could buy that there’s a ‘they’ pronoun developed in this futuristic Mandarin. I cannot buy that they basically said “well, these two words sound the same so let’s merge them together”. That is. Not how language works! Not to mention that these words in written Mandarin are still different. You can’t just smush them together and translate them as ‘they’ because they sound the same. Are you going to do that in English for ‘sun’ and ‘son’? No! And, even in spoken Mandarin, there’ll often be context to tell you which pronoun the speaker means, so I would imagine it’s rarely hugely ambiguous. Mandarin speakers are not considering themselves to be going around calling everyone ‘they’ because the words sound the same. (Plus, I feel it’s somewhat disrespectful to nonbinary Mandarin speakers who, you know, might want their own pronouns?)

Moving on from the pronouns, let’s come to this whole thing of eliminating extreme gender traits from DNA, thus effectively making everyone agender. It’s hard to put into words just how much this whole idea wants to poke my eyes out. It plays exactly into TERF rhetoric that gender equals biology. By removing the “biology” (questionable to say the least?), you remove the “gender”. So our agender society has TERF-y logic underpinning it. Combine this with the part I mentioned at the start where using ‘they’ makes you “civilised” and ‘he’ or ‘she’ “uncivilised” and you get some really weird shit. There are “pro-gender” terrorists in this and I cannot for the life of me tell if it’s some TERF allegory, or in which direction it’s meant to be. Are the Martians TERFs because of their biological understanding of gender? Are the Earth diaspora TERFs because of their insistence on clinging to Earth ideas of gender (which, by the way, does not appear to include nonbinary or trans people in itself)? Is everyone a TERF???

One piece more of information can inform us here: in creating an agender society, Natasha Pulley has, barring the minorest of minor characters, entirely eradicated women from her novel. Maybe no one’s a TERF then. Don’t need feminism if you don’t have women!

(That’s sarcastic, btw.)

2. In-world racism.

Second of the major issues with worldbuilding regards the in-world concepts of racism, and how exactly characters are racist. This is a book about anti-immigrant politics, about a politician whose entire platform rests on xenophobic and racist rhetoric. Basically, what we have here is a book that essentially translates as “far right politician forced to fake-date political opposite and they fall in love”. And yes, I should absolutely have read that blurb and stayed the fuck away. Alas, I do not appear to possess basic survival instincts, but, since I did read this, I can detail exactly what’s awful about it!

Let me just say, overall this felt like a very strange take from a British author in the midst of such an anti-immigration Tory government. I don’t want to make any assumptions about Pulley’s personal politics, but uh. Yeah. You’ll see why.

Once again, Pulley demonstrates a fundamental lack of knowledge about how racism works, and falls straight into that SFF trap that has authors try to justify racism (see this article [https://medium.com/@RealDorianDawes/ethics-in-magical-world-building-fantasy-bigotry-9afba2cb3dcd] for explanation if you don’t already know this part). It turns out that humans coming to Mars from Earth are, due to the differences in gravity, automatically bigger and stronger than Martians who’ve spent years there and who are frail and fragile in comparison. So much that an Earther might easily kill a Martian with just a tap and are thus forced to remain in literal cages as they go about their day. The reason our love interest in particular is xenophobic is because they were attacked by an Earther and injured a little while before the events of the book take place. Thus, they choose to call for all Earthers to be surgically altered so they’re less strong and pose no threat to Martians (a surgery which drastically ruins Earther quality of life, by the by).

Now, January — January is the most frustrating protagonist in this respect. Instead of challenging Gale on his bigotry, he tries to accommodate them. He’s repeatedly saying he disagrees with the idea that Earthers are dangerous, only to turn around and say “well, we are dangerous, we might accidentally kill a Martian”, like he’s justifying it. He wears his cage almost permanently around Gale, and even hands them the key to it, so he can’t take it off until Gale decides they’re not scared of him any longer (a decision which has a negative impact on his own health). He spends a lot of the time advocating for his own oppression. A common conversation between January and Gale will go like so:

GALE, A BIGOT: Earthstrongers must be all surgically altered so they’re not dangerous to native Martians.

JANUARY, A WET DRIP: You’re a bigot! But actually, you’re right because we are soooo much stronger and sooooo dangerous to you guys :( Yes, we should all be kept in cages :(

I don’t even think you can make the effective argument that January’s been indoctrinated by Martian bigotry because he’s not even been there a year! He fails to conform to the pronouns thing, but he’s perfectly happy considering himself dangerous and a potential killer all the time? Uh, okay. It takes a good half of the book for January to stand up to Gale’s xenophobia in any way, at which point it suddenly becomes justified for another reason. Great!

There are another couple of questionable aspects to mention before we move on (okay, questionable might be too weak a word). Firstly, there’s an undercurrent of suspicion that the immigrants are coming over to subsume the Martian colony back into Earth China, which isn’t that challenged. I mean, it’s revealed that the end that the non-fascist politician is actually working to do this, so it’s almost like… fascist good??? Secondly, the plot ends with the building of an immigration detention centre. I kid you not, that’s how they resolve the arrival of these refugees. By building a detention centre.

But don’t worry, it’s a nice detention centre! It has toilets and everything!

3. Other wishy-washy worldbuilding aspects.

In general, I think Natasha Pulley’s writing lends itself better to real world fiction, or rather, fiction based in a setting she doesn’t have to make up so much. Where there’s some grounding in what we (and she) already know(s). A lot of the worldbuilding in this one felt somewhat flimsy, included because why not!, rather than because it made sense or added to the narrative.

Case in point: the talking mammoths. For some apparent reason, there are both polar bears and mammoths on Mars. And the mammoths have language! They can talk! They can offer Gale political advice! And, I KID YOU NOT, it is from these mammoths, in a single conversation, that Gale learns tolerance and acceptance (and thus uncages January).

It was at this point that I’m pretty sure I burst into hysterics and checked out of the book. The talking mammoths felt so entirely out of step with the whole rest of the story, and that they were what prompted Gale’s change of heart (not, you might think, January proving himself trustworthy (as if he should have had to, etc etc))? I give up trying to make sense of anything about this, there’s no point! The only function they appeared to serve (besides the whole teaching tolerance nonsense) was that you can point to the book and say look! It’s got talking mammoths!

“Was I just schooled about the nature of good government by a mammoth?” Gale asks. Boy, I really fucking hope not.

(It also felt like Pulley wrote the mechanical octopus into The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and has been trying to recapture that kind of effortless whimsy in her books ever since. Alas, talking mammoths are anything but effortless.)

— The characters.

Everything I have to say from here will get progressively shorter, I’m sure you’re glad to know. In fact, my comments on the characters will probably be the shortest of all. Really, what I want to say here is solely that Pulley’s characters are starting to feel incredibly samey, in particular the last three protagonists she’s written. Thaniel and Merrick are probably her most distinct of characters, followed by Joe (simply because he’s the first of the next three). Yes, they all share similarities (perhaps more than you might want for an author), but not so much as Joe, Valery and January do.

This is, likely, a disservice to Joe and The Kingdoms (which is my favourite of Pulley’s books, although I fear testing it by rereading it after this!). He is, after all, the prototype. And maybe my view of Valery and January as very similar to him is borne of the fact that The Half Life of Valery K and The Mars House are easily my least favourite Pulley books. But the fact remains that I don’t think any of the three are meaningfully distinct. Their POVs sound exactly the same — a fact which could be put down to writing style, yes — but they also feel like the same character cast in three different plots.

There’s also a pattern appearing where Pulley’s couples are made up of a big, brutish-seeming-but-actually-a-gentle-giant character, along with a smaller, frailer character (often also more womanish?? But that could be retrospective analysis from me), and a fair amount is made of their difference in size and power. Admittedly, that last part is greater here simply because the whole thing about physical power is plot-relevant (or rather, bigotry-relevant). Your mileage may vary on how much you can stand the whole size difference schtick, but with six books of couples forming this pattern, I at least am starting to feel a bit like. Ooooh-kaaaay.

— The writing.

Pulley’s writing is, as ever, lovely, and probably one of the only positive things I have to mention about this book, but even that comes with a caveat. All of Pulley’s books have this quiet kind of gentleness to them, which worked for the first four books and even with the brutality of The Kingdoms, where it felt like the contrast between that gentleness and the non-gentleness of events highlighted the latter. It has not worked well here, much like it didn’t in The Half Life of Valery K. In the latter case, it served more to feel like it was downplaying the horrors of the gulag. This was probably because Pulley was more inclined to fully describe the brutality of The Kingdoms and more likely to brush over it in The Half Life of Valery K (possibly because the romance was between a prisoner and a guard?). In The Mars House, that gentleness becomes tonally quite odd. There’s all this anti-immigrant rhetoric and discussion of disabling surgery and eugenics, and it’s all packaged up in this writing that feels like it obscures those horrors. Like I said, odd.

Of course, though, if you had full access to those horrors, if it didn’t feel like there was a blanket being placed over it all to muffle the noise, there would be no way in hell that you could root for Gale as January’s love interest.

— The what the fuck bit.

Last but not least, and really quite pertinent given that, as I’m writing this, Israeli occupation forces are in the midst of committing genocide in Gaza and every day brings with it more and more horrific war crimes by their soldiers, this book, set in the future, is doing its bit to bring that reality nearer. There are two mentions of Israel in this and, firstly, that’s two too many. One is the mention of an AI having a “wonderful, homely Israeli accent”. Which, yuck, and also you could have chosen any country in the world to make this comment, so why an illegal apartheid state, huh? (Also January is from Britain: why would he consider Israel to be “homely”??) But to make it even more egregious, with the next mention, Pulley erases Palestine in its entirety.

I stress that this book is set in the future for this very reason. In Pulley’s future, it seems that Israel has succeeded in its aim of murdering every Palestinian and wiping out their state, culture, and entire existence. There is, in here, a scene set during Christmas, in which a young Martian child reading an Earther book, asks what Bethlehem is. January has no response, so Gale cuts in to say that it’s a town in Israel.

A quick google search would tell you that Bethlehem is a town in the West Bank, a.k.a. in Occupied Palestine. Not Israel! In fact, being in the West Bank, in an area where (technically) Israelis are not permitted. So not only has Pulley chosen to normalise the existence of an illegal settler-colonial state in her future-set book, she has also chosen to entirely wipe out the land’s indigenous population. Just giving the IOF a helping hand!

So, with this comes to a close possibly the longest review I have ever written, and definitely the longest essay-type thing I have since finishing my dissertation a few years ago. If you’ve stuck with me this far, congrats! I hope I’ve not killed your enthusiasm over this one too much. If you’re skipping to the end, I offer you this TL;DR: in conclusion, fascism solved because the fascist marries someone oppressed 🫶🏻.

*This is not quite true because, reading through my notes, I found the following: chapter 20: OH MY GOD IT'S A WOMAN. She lasted for one single chapter though, so I think it barely counts.

I ever so slightly love January, and even possibly Natashe Pulley for bringing him to life.
He was the very best of us humans, warm, honest, funny, and you can imagine the twinkle in his eye.
When the book opens in a drowning London, you can almost imagine this could be our future.
Some very good food for thought on the earth strong and being naturalised on Mars.
But the joy of this book, is January, and the way he interacts with everyone and every situation.
A few things were predictable, but they didn't spoil the story.
Very very enjoyable.

Full review up on Nerds of a Feather from 4 January 2024.

This is a real departure from the type of fantasy that Pulley does best. Typically she excels at creating images and events that depend on some sort of magic, which is evoked but never fully explained. It makes for a dreamy quality to her narrative that is quite distinctive of her style.

In this book, she uses a science-fiction setting, and although she evokes otherworldliness in the same way (the floating gravity, the talking mammoths, the misty solar power collectors), she's forced by the strictures of the genre to explain that otherworldliness, and it just doesn't quite work. If Mars is desperately dry and arid, then why does raising the temperature around a solar power generator create mist? Increasing air temperature makes it dryer, not wetter. (This is why we use humidifiers in the winter to combat dry air, and why dew collects at night, when temperatures drop.) Warm air can hold *more* moisture, not less, so if anything the mist should be gathering where the air gets cold, not where it gets warm.

Likewise, the vast differences in strength caused by growing up in different gravity systems are beautifully evoked, but the Harrison-Bergeron-like solution, to put Earthstrong people in cages that increase resistance to muscle movement so they can't accidentally hurt native Martians, also seems to carry some strange magical consequences for muscle mass. Sure, if you can't accidentally punch someone with your full strength, that would work, but it seems that the cages also do things like make it difficult to survive falls that would otherwise pose no danger to Earthstrong muscles. How? Why? If your bones are so dense that the fall won't hurt you at Martian gravities, then why would that impact be more dangerous if you're wearing a cage?

There are lots of examples of this: ideas that are evocative and useful for plotting and pacing and tension and stakes, but which simply don't work if you're trying to come up with a science-fictional type solution for them. With Pulley's approach to fantasy, she can leave it in the misty background. With SF, she can't.

That said, the non-SF books worked wonderfully well. I was extremely impressed at how she manages to create a political debate that both reflects current concerns over topical issues like climate refugees and immigration, and also doesn't have a knee-jerk 'these guys are the baddies' side to it. Both sides have genuinely good points.

It's not Pulley's best work. But I devoured it in a day, and will devour her next, because even Pulley's not-best work is still good stuff.

[Thanks to Netgalley for ARC]

This book swallowed me whole and refused to let me go for 4 days. For fans of Winters orbit and Lois McMaster Bujold, this is a book about language, how new society subcultures form, gender, mammoths and space. It's fascinating - I want to live inside Natasha Pulley's brain, she has more astounding ideas than I know what to do with - and I would happily read a thousand more pages set on Mars. The incredible arranged marriage queer romance was just an added bonus. Book of the year for me.

I enjoyed the slow- burn romance and world-building in The Mars House by Natasha Pulley, a queer sci-fi.
I received a copy of this book for a free and unbiased opinion.
The worlds of a future earth devastated by climate change and the new and evolving society on Mars are beautiful and intricate in its description. The first few chapters where January lives his life in a London under water is almost poetic with boats floating under the dome of St Paul’s cathedral but the horror of this eventually sinks in- this is a dying city. This is complete contrast to the high tech world of Mars where people are physically connected to a kind of internet and can have real-life filters on their images.
January becomes a climate refugee, moving to Mars where he meets persistent discrimination and demonisation. This description again is thoughtful and descriptive mirroring what we read about today. The fact the only way he can avoid undergoing a painful, physical transformation to survive on Mars is to agree to an arranged marriage with the person who ruined his life is horrifying.
But the slow friendship and romance that blossoms between these two very different people is the heart of this book but there is also an underlying mystery, What did Aubrey do to River, his brother? How can Aubrey be so kind and nice and then insist people from Earth are dangerous?

The story and plot move gently, and I loved the writing with it’s gentle humour and there were times I wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on particularly when the pollical shenanigans between Aubrey and his rival came into play. But the action soon picks up with unsuspected reveals and an explosive and satisfying finish.

Don't really know how to give a numerical rating for this. Had the below not been so jarring to read, could have been in the 4-5 range.

Natasha Pulley is - now could be 'was' - one of my favorite authors. I want to love this book, this was my most anticipated read for 2024 and it's full of all my favorite aspects of Pulley's writing since reading Watchmaker and every other book she released. But two references in this have me considering getting rid of my collection of her books. I was very close to DNFing.

I would hope that these were written out of ignorance considering the time frame between writing / edits and proofs being made / publication and how lacking in knowledge people may have been before recent events. I hope that these two parts will be edited out, and/or in the case of one mention, corrected.

The first: 'a wonderful homely Israeli accent', really? Of all the accents and places? And and January being happy about the connection. Why?

The second: Bethlehem is not a city in Israel, it's a city in Palestine.

I would like to be able to give the benefit of the doubt and if circumstances have changed, will amend my review.